A RT I C L E 91

The role of parents in children’s Psychology of Music

Psychology of Music
musical development Copyright © 2009
Society for Education, Music
and Psychology Research
vol 37(1): 91–110 [0305-7356
(200901) 37:1; 91–110]
10.1177/0305735607086049
http://pom.sagepub.com

G A RY E . M C P H E R S O N
U N I V E R S I T Y O F I L L I N O I S A T U R B A N A - C H A M PA I G N , U S A

A framework for studying parent–child interactions is proposed, based on

A B S T R AC T
evidence that parents play a pivotal role in their children’s musical development. It is
suggested that the goals and aspirations that parents hold impact on the styles and
practices they adopt during interactions with their children. Importantly, the model
proposes a feedback loop in which child and socio-contextual characteristics interact
with parenting goals, styles and practices to help shape children’s musical competence
and achievement, their sense of musical identity and accomplishment, and their
continuing desire to participate, exert effort, overcome obstacles and succeed musically.

KEYWORDS: home environment, musical development, music motivation, parent–child interac-

tions, parental practices, parental style

Introduction
During the past 30 years, some of the most important advances in understanding
children’s psychological functioning and achievement have come from research that
focuses on the socialization processes that occur in the home, with results showing a
consistently positive effect of parental influences on student achievement, attitudes,
behaviour and learning (Asmus, 2006; Pomerantz, Grolnick, & Price, 2005). As with
other areas of children’s development, the home environment is crucial in early musi-
cal development (Asmus, 1985, 1986; Brand, 1986). Beginning at a young age, chil-
dren develop resilient attitudes, beliefs and expectations about their potential to learn
music that have been instilled in them through interactions with their parents
(McPherson & Davidson, 2002, 2006). Parents are critical to a child’s ongoing suc-
cess in all areas of their education and this is particularly true in music, a subject
that involves particularly high demands (McPherson & Zimmerman, 2002).
Only a handful of studies have examined the role of parents in children’s musical
development. This stands in contrast to a growing body of literature available in
educational and developmental psychology that details how parents influence their
children’s achievement. Recently, Creech and Hallam (2003) have discussed the
dynamic relationship between the parent, teacher and pupil, to document interac-
tions that can influence outcomes for all three groups in instrumental tuition. The
model they propose examines these interactions from the perspective of a systems

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92 Psychology of Music 37(1)

approach, in that it provides a framework for understanding certain types of human

behaviour and communication between teachers, parents and students that work
together in the context of instrumental music lessons. The model proposed here, how-
ever, draws the lens in much closer to explain the psychological principles that under-
pin specific types of parent–child interactions within the home environment. I consider
this view particularly important for helping to frame the types of parent–child inter-
actions and ‘emotional climates’ that occur separately from, or in conjunction with,
formal and informal music learning. The major purpose of this article, therefore, is to
synthesize evidence from educational and developmental psychology with what is
known in music, in order to propose a model that can be used to frame the critical
types of parent–child interactions that have an impact on music learning.

Children’s psychological needs

Very recent research in developmental psychology has focused on competence (Elliot
& Dweck, 2005) and motivation to succeed (Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998). As
shown by Pomerantz et al. (2005), these theoretical positions are important because
they highlight the social contextual forces present in the parent–child interactions
that influence children’s learning. A key principle embedded in these explanations is
that parents enable their children to positively approach achievement through an
innate need to feel:

Competent: The more children perceive themselves as competent, the more they
are likely to engage in learning tasks, utilize the skills and strategies they pos-
sess, persist when they confront difficulties and achieve success (Austin,
Renwick, & McPherson, 2006). In their early years, the most important feedback
children use to form conceptions of their own competence comes from parents
(Wigfield et al., 1997).
Autonomous: Children have a basic need to feel autonomous; that is, to make
independent choices. Parents who support their children’s development of auton-
omy are more likely to have children who are self-regulated, display greater com-
petence and achieve at a higher level, possess fewer learning difficulties, and take
more overall responsibility for their own learning (Grolnick, Gurland, Jacob, &
DeCourcey, 2002).
Related: Children need to feel connected to their parents by a strong loving bond
(Pomerantz et al., 2005). High levels of intrinsic motivation for music are more
likely to occur when parents and teachers support children in warm, caring and
non-threatening environments (McPherson & Davidson, 2006). In contrast, lower
levels of intrinsic motivation can become apparent when adults ignore children’s
work on interesting activities (Deci & Ryan, 2000).
Purposeful: Success and enjoyment are outcomes of learning when children feel
that the activity in which they are engaged is meaningful and valuable, and that
it relates to their own personal goals. A sense of purpose helps to prevent boredom
and enhances opportunities to experience success (Ryff & Singer, 1998).

Children are likely to approach activities with which they are engaged more positively
when the above psychological needs are satisfied (Pomerantz et al., 2005). When
these occur, children are better placed to draw on the regulatory resources that will
enable them to form positive judgments about whether or not they wish to achieve

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 McPherson: The role of parents in children’s musical development 93

and why, hold more positive personal beliefs about their capacity to achieve
(as reflected in higher feelings of self-worth and self-efficacy for mastering difficult
activities) and draw on more effective learning strategies that help them persist with
their learning as they strive to achieve the goals that they personally view as important
(Pomerantz et al., 2005).

PA R E N TA L I N F L U E N C E S O N C H I L D R E N ’ S AC H I E V E M E N T
Parents (and perhaps mothers more so than fathers) play a critical role in the
processes outlined above (West, Noden, & Edge, 1998). In educational literature, par-
enting has often been defined according to two separate dimensions: parenting style
and parenting practices. Parenting style is defined as the ‘constellation of attitudes
toward the child that are communicated to the child and that, taken together, create
an emotional climate in which the parent’s behaviours are expressed’ (Darling &
Steinberg, 1993, p. 488), while parenting practice relates to the specific behaviours
used to socialize children.
Studying the relationship between specific parenting practices and educational
outcomes appears to be logical. Parenting practices are specific behaviours (e.g., being
present at music lessons, helping with practice, attending concerts) that parents adopt
to realize the socialization goals they hold for their child (e.g., being successful at
music, enjoying musical participation). In much of the initial research literature, both
in education (e.g., studies of how parents help their child with homework) and in
music (e.g., studies of how parents help their child with musical practice; see Brokaw,
1983; Doan, 1973; McPherson & Davidson, 2002), these parental practices have
been shown to have a direct influence on children’s educational achievement out-
comes (Spera, 2005, 2006), as depicted in Figure 1.
Unfortunately, explanations that are restricted to these two dimensions have serious
limitations because the relationship between parenting practices and achievement is
mediated by many other factors. For example, two siblings may exhibit different levels
of achievement even though their parents use similar practices to help both children
with their musical development. As shown below, attempts to study a direct link
between specific parenting practices and educational outcomes without acknowledg-
ing other influential aspects of the home environment are therefore simplistic. The
home environment is complex, so studying parental practices alone does not help us
to discriminate with sufficient accuracy between the various complex, dynamic rela-
tionships that operate within families.
My reconceptualized model (see Figure 2) depicts how the goals parents hold for
their child’s musical education (and more generally) lead to the types of styles and
practices they adopt when interacting with their child. The interactive
feedback loops within the model also show how parental goals, styles and practices
are mediated by child characteristics and other sociocultural factors, which in turn

Parenting practices Children’s achievement

FIGURE 1 Parenting practices and children’s achievement.

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 94

Parenting style Mediators

Child characteristics
Psychology of Music 37(1)

Parent cognition and affect that: Motivation

• communicate attitudes and values, Degree to which learning music is:
• interesting
• create an emotional climate, and • important
• convey attitudes about the child • useful Child outcomes
• difficult
Parenting goals cost-effective • Musical competence and
effortful achievement
Shaped by: emotionally or physically demanding
Personal feelings of musical: • Sense of musical identity
• values expressed through
• competence and accomplishment
• beliefs
mediates • confidence • Continuing desire to:
• attitudes Self-beliefs participate
• aspirations Personal beliefs about: exert effort
• musical ability overcome obstacles
• the immediate and long-term value of succeed
musical participation
Parenting practices Self-regulation
Parent behaviours that are: Degree of musical engagement:
• metacognitively
• domain-specific

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• goal-directed
• convey attitudes about
the child’s behaviour
• motivationally
• behaviourally
Socio-contextual characteristics
Social and cultural contexts in which
parent–child interactions occur

FIGURE 2 Parent–child interactions in children’s musical learning.

 McPherson: The role of parents in children’s musical development 95

support and help frame a number of child outcomes, the most important of which
are competence and achievement, a sense of musical identity and accomplishment,
and the continuing desire to participate, exert effort, overcome obstacles and succeed.
These processes, based on recent psychological evidence, are depicted in Figure 2 and
explained in more detail in the following sections.

Parental orientations
PA R E N TA L G OA L S
Parents have basic ideas about how they want to raise their children and specific
views about what they want them to achieve. Parenting involves socializing children
by raising them to be able to participate in society (Spera, 2006). The values, beliefs,
attitudes and aspirations held by parents shape the specific goals they hold for their
children (Spera, 2006; Wentzel, 1998). For example, parents might aspire for their
children high academic achievement, sporting ability, good manners, a strong work
ethic, good interpersonal relations, and so on. Parental socialization goals influence
parental styles, that is, the ‘emotional climate’ in which parental attitudes and values
can be expressed to the child. These goals also influence parental practices, as evi-
denced in the specific actions and messages parents convey to their children about
their behaviour (Spera, 2006).
In music, parental styles and practices help satisfy children’s most basic psycho-
logical needs, which are to feel competent, to feel that they have some control over
the choices to be made during the learning process, to feel a strong bond between
their parents and their teachers within a non-threatening learning environment and
to enjoy the success that comes from engaging meaningfully as a result of personally
rewarding musical experiences (McPherson & Davidson, 2006).

PA R E N TA L S T Y L E S
Parental cognition and affect influence how attitudes and values are conveyed to child-
ren and the degree to which parents are able to create the type of emotional climate
that is conducive to effective music learning.

Parental cognition
Like the behaviours that parents exhibit when interacting with their child, the beliefs
they hold are vital. We have known since the 1950s that parental expectations and
aspirations are closely connected with children’s level of self-esteem, motivation, and
achievement. More recent evidence shows that children’s perceptions of competence
are shaped more strongly by parents than by teachers (see survey, Pomerantz et al.,
2005). Put more directly, the more accurately a parent views his or her child’s com-
petence, the better that child will perform (Miller, Manhal, & Mee, 1991).
In the achievement motivation literature, evidence has emerged demonstrating
that parents socialize their children in ways that are consistent with their perceptions
of how well they feel they are doing academically (e.g., Eccles, 1983; Halle, Kurtz-
Costes, & Mahoney, 1997; Jodl, Michael, Malanchuk, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2001). As
Pomerantz and Dong (2006) explain, ‘Inherent in this portrayal is the idea that par-
ents view competence as relatively fixed, so that they use their perceptions to guide

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96 Psychology of Music 37(1)

children toward the niches for which they believe children are suited’ (p. 951). As an
extension to this view, Pomerantz and Dong have shown that mothers who hold a
fixed view of competence possess attitudes about their child’s learning that actually
foreshadow their child’s achievement and create a self-fulfilling prophecy. In contrast,
mothers who viewed competence as malleable did not predict their child’s achieve-
ment. When explaining these findings, Pomerantz and Dong suggest that the main
factor concerns the degree to which parents believe competence to be something that
cannot be easily changed. The more fixed parents view their child’s competence, the
more self-fulfilling is their perception.
This finding has particular relevance given the widely held but inaccurate view
that musicians are born rather than made and that musical ability is therefore the
result of a special innate gift or natural talent that a child either does or does not pos-
sess (Davis, 1994; Gagné, Blanchard, & Bégin, 2001; McPherson, 2006a; Lehmann,
Sloboda, & Woody, 2007; Winner, 1996). This misconception became evident in a
study I conducted to examine mother–child interactions during the first year of musi-
cal learning (see McPherson & Davidson, 2002). Interviews with mothers before their
children started learning showed that some held a fixed view that their child might
not have sufficient ability to cope with the demands of music. Consequently, very soon
after learning commenced, many of the mothers of unsuccessful learners withdrew
their support for practice, based on their assessment that the child was not coping
emotionally, that if he or she was really interested then practice would be completed
anyway, or because they were unwilling themselves to invest in the time and effort
needed to regulate their child’s daily practice schedule. Unfortunately, the fixed
perceptions of children’s musical competence held by some mothers partly explained
why some of the unsuccessful learners came to feel that they did not have the
necessary ability to cope with the demands of learning music. McPherson and
Davidson (2002) concluded therefore that some of the mothers had actually given up
on their child as a potential musician much sooner than the child had come to feel
the same way.
This attitude can be seen in other ways. For example, a commonly held view is
that music is a subject that has high intrinsic value but low attainment and utility
value (McPherson, 2006a). As an example, parents may provide their children with
a music education based on their belief that their child will enjoy and find music
interesting during their time at school while at the same time holding the view that
music is not as important or useful as other ‘academic’ school subjects in terms of
future preparation for life and a career. Consequently, how parents regard music
(as compared to other learning opportunities) has far-reaching consequences for chil-
dren’s musical education and on the interactions depicted in Figure 2 (McPherson,
2006a; see also McPherson, 2000).

Parental affect
Related to parental perceptions of competence are the feelings that parents have for
their child. Parents breed feelings of relatedness and closeness within the family
environment, which are vital for their children to develop a sense of autonomy and pur-
posefulness. Close parent–child bonding also results in other positive benefits for child-
ren, such as being more mastery-oriented, a willingness to utilize more sophisticated

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 McPherson: The role of parents in children’s musical development 97

cognitive skills and higher achievement (Pomerantz et al., 2005). It is self-

evident therefore that parental affect plays a key role in children’s music learning.

PA R E N TA L P R AC T I C E S
Parents employ specific behaviours and strategies to help socialize their children.
These behaviours most often occur in the context of a specific domain and are inter-
ventions in or reactions to children’s behaviour that convey information about how
the parent feels about what the child is doing or has done (Pomerantz et al., 2005).
Research shows that parental behaviour is particularly effective if it involves struc-
turing. However, to be most effective it should be autonomy-supportive rather than
controlling and should help focus the child on processes to be employed in learning.
Parents’ ability to focus their child on effort (e.g., ‘You’re working hard, and I can
hear how quickly you’re improving’) rather than fixed ability perceptions (‘You don’t
seem to be very good at that. What’s wrong?’) are crucial (Pomerantz et al., 2005).
Other forms of parental involvement such as providing resources (e.g., purchasing
a music stand or new instrument), acting interested in what the child is learning
(e.g., ‘Can you play that new piece for me?’) and being more generally interested in the
child’s life all facilitate learning and involvement. Parental involvement also occurs
when a parent participates in supportive activities (such as joining the school’s music
committee), sits with the child when practising an instrument, or more generally talks
about musical learning (e.g., ‘How did you go in your music lesson today? Did you
learn anything new?’). Parents extend their support through taking their child to
concerts, purchasing additional resources to enhance learning (e.g., CD and record-
ings), expressing excitement over their child’s successes (such as when a beginner has
mastered a new piece) and keeping abreast of what is going on in lessons. Indeed,
parental behaviours of these types are critical for children’s ongoing musical success
(see McPherson & Davidson, 2006).
Parental behaviour of the type described above help children develop skills that
then lead to feelings of competence. They also reinforce for the child that the parent
is interested in what he or she is doing; and, if the activity is also valued, they develop
a sense of relatedness that fosters a closeness between parent and child that acts as
a buffer during periods when the child experiences difficulties or obstacles that
hinder progress (see Pomerantz et al., 2005 for academic achievement; McPherson &
Davidson, 2006 for music learning). In summary, when parents foster a sense of
competence, their child will feel more competent and more in control of his or her
learning (Grolnick & Slowiaczek, 1994).
When parents work proactively to provide information, guidelines and feedback,
they enhance their child’s feelings of competence and help structure their child’s learn-
ing environment in ways that facilitate and enhance the acquisition of skills
(Pomerantz et al., 2005). Parents can also help to scaffold learning by subtle variations
of the amount of information they provide within the range of their child’s current
capabilities by tailoring their interactions depending on how the child is progressing
(Pomerantz et al., 2005). If the child is doing well, assistance can be decreased.
However, if the child is struggling, he or she will need extra assistance.
Importantly, also, some parents will react to external reports of poor progress only
when they are made aware that there is a problem or perceive that their child is

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98 Psychology of Music 37(1)

having difficulties (Pomerantz & Eaton, 2001). In my longitudinal study with begin-
ning music students (McPherson & Davidson, 2002, 2006), I found that parents who
were willing to invest time and effort to support their child’s musical learning were
often unsure how to help their child cope with difficulties and deal with the frustra-
tions that arose during the early stages of learning. In conversations with mothers
of children who ceased playing, many spoke about the frustrations they experienced
when trying to encourage their child to practise or attend lessons. As a consequence,
once they felt that their child was not keeping up or lacked ability, some of these
mothers would steer their child to another activity that they believed would be more
rewarding and less stressful.
Better music learners are more likely to be self-regulated and know how to work
autonomously (McPherson & Zimmerman, 2002). Parents play an important part in
developing these skills. For example, parents who are more autonomy-supportive
rather than controlling tend to have children who are more likely to explore their
own environment, monitor and control their own learning, and be more active in
the way that they solve problems and cope with difficulties (Pomerantz
et al., 2005). Children are far less likely to succeed and cope with their musical learn-
ing when their parents exert pressure through orders, commands, instructions and
restrictions. The main benefit of autonomy-supportive parenting is that this support
encourages children to take initiative in order to develop stronger feelings of compe-
tence as they start to solve challenges by themselves (Grolnick, Gurland, DeCourcey, &
Jacob, 2002; Pomerantz & Ruble, 1998).
Additional conceptions extend this view by proposing that an ideal parental style
for developing a child’s sense of competence is authoritative, that is, one in which the
parent displays high involvement in the child’s learning, high structuring of the envi-
ronment in which the learning takes place and high autonomy-support. In contrast,
authoritarian parental involvement characterized by low involvement, high structure
and high control is far less likely to breed feelings of competence (Pomerantz et al.,
2005; Steinberg, Lamborn, Darling, Mounts, & Dornbusch, 1994).
As shown by Pomerantz et al. (2005), when parents respond to their children’s
accomplishments by acknowledging their hard work, reacting to their frustrations by
focusing them on the learning goals, reminding them that working hard is more
important than achieving high grades and helping them develop strategies that will
serve them well in their learning, they are displaying a process orientation that
fosters feelings of competence in the child. In contrast, parents who employ a person
orientation focus more on praising the child’s ability, which in turn expresses to them
that they will be personally disappointed if they do not continue to achieve at a high
level. The danger of adopting a person orientation is that children might start to feel
that their parents are pushing them with little regard to the process employed and
that they therefore have little control over their own ability.

M E D I ATO R S
Parental influences are not a one-way process, so conceptions proposing that parents
socialize their children in a unidirectional manner are deficient. There are many
instances that could be cited, for example, where a child’s initial interest in music
acts as a catalyst for his or her parents to become supportive and interested to the

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 McPherson: The role of parents in children’s musical development 99

extent that they will devote enormous amounts of time and resources to help their
child learn music (Howe & Sloboda, 1991; Sosniak, 1985, 1987). Children’s charac-
teristics as well as social-contextual forces appear therefore to be the prime modera-
tors of parental cognition, affect and behaviour (Pomerantz et al., 2005).

Child characteristics
As shown previously, parents play a critical role in shaping how children come to feel
competent, autonomous, related and purposeful. To understand this dynamic process
further, however, it is important to investigate how and in what situations parents are
receptive to their children’s beliefs and expectations. As shown by McPherson (2000),
even beginning musicians as young as seven or eight are able to quickly form an
impression of how competent they are at coping with their new instrument. In this
study, the children could differentiate between their interest in learning a musical
instrument, the importance to them of being good at music, whether they believed
their learning would be useful to their short- and long-term goals and the cost of par-
ticipation in terms of the effort needed to continue improving.
The degree to which the parents influenced the children’s expectations and valu-
ing of their future music lessons as reported by McPherson (2000) is unknown.
However, the impression gained from the extensive interviews with the mothers and
the children throughout the first three years of learning are in accord with psycho-
logical research (e.g., Pomerantz et al., 2005), which suggests that parents who adopt
controlling practices will be far less successful than parents who use autonomy-
support practices in helping children who view themselves as incompetent.
Controlling practices fail children because they reinforce perceptions that the child is
not coping and has less ability than others.
Parents also have a major role in helping children who are experiencing difficul-
ties to cope when irritable (Pomerantz et al., 2005), especially when they are able to
put their own frustrations aside in order to focus their child on the enjoyable aspects
of learning. It is especially important, therefore, for parents to be willing to put up
with the uncomfortable squawks and noises that typify children’s early attempts to
master a range of basic instrumental skills and to maintain a positive attitude dur-
ing periods when they themselves are frustrated or angry with their child’s attitude
or approach to music learning. Such practices are generally more successful for pro-
moting motivation, persistence and ongoing musical involvement, especially during
times when music learning is demanding and stressful for a child (McPherson &
Davidson, 2006).

Motivation
Many facets underpin children’s personal beliefs for learning music. The level of child-
ren’s commitment to music is partially shaped by parental influences, the expecta-
tions children hold for becoming competent and the value children place on their
engagement during the process of learning. In music, six dimensions have been iden-
tified that help to explain the types of expectations children hold for their musical
learning and the degree to which they value their musical participation (McPherson &
Davidson, 2006):

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100 Psychology of Music 37(1)

Interest – the personal satisfaction gained from learning music.

Importance – the degree to which learning music fits with personal goals about
what one hopes to be good at.
Usefulness – whether learning music is constructive and functional for what the
child wishes to do now and in the future.
Difficulty – whether the learning process creates obstacles or is perceived as being
more difficult than other activities.
Competence – for which participating in music becomes an activity in which the
child would like to succeed.
Confidence – the empowerment felt for developing the skills necessary to master
challenges associated with learning music (e.g., whether the learning process is
fraught with pressures and anxieties that diminish confidence and a sense of self-
worth).

Every time children choose to devote effort to music, they are making decisions in the
context of a complex social reality in which they have many choices, each of which
has immediate and long-term consequences (Eccles, 2005). Very often, their choices
are made from a number of viable options. In the context of the home environment,
choosing to go off and practise an instrument might be just as viable as finishing off
a school assignment or choosing to go out and play with friends. Faced with these
types of decisions, students will very often choose the option that they value most
unless their decision has been shaped by their parents. Thus, in order to understand
why a child chooses some options over others we must discern the child’s hierarchy
of subjective task values, not the absolute value the child places on each of them, in
addition to the parent’s role in this decision-making process (Eccles, 2005).
Children’s performance on specific tasks is influenced heavily by the degree to which
they expect their engagement to be interesting, important, useful and difficult, their
valuing of the activity, and their feelings of competence and confidence (Warton,
2001; Wigfield et al., 1997). As described previously, these attributes are established
even before children arrive at their first music lessons as a result of interactions with
their parents, who shape their expectations and valuing of music as well as their
educational attainment (McPherson & Davidson, 2006; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000).

Self-beliefs
In the psychological literature on motivation, studies concerned with self-beliefs are
so prevalent that they dominate the field (Graham & Weiner, 1996). Among the most
important are the types of judgments people make about their capacity to organize
and execute actions to attain chosen goals (Bandura, 1977, 1997). Self-efficacy judg-
ments of this type are defined in terms of what a person thinks he or she can do and
have consistently been shown to be powerful predictors of student achievement across
a number of domains (Bandura, 1997). In music, self-efficacy is an effective predictor
of children’s capacity to perform music in stressful situations (McCormick &
McPherson, 2003; McPherson & McCormick, 2006), and therefore crucial in an area
as difficult and taxing as learning music, where ‘insidious self-doubts can easily over-
rule the best of skills’ (Bandura, 1997, p. 35; McPherson & Davidson, 2006).
The seminal figure in self-efficacy research is Albert Bandura (1977, 1997),
whose contribution has helped shape thinking for the past three decades. In a recent

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 McPherson: The role of parents in children’s musical development 101

publication, Bandura (2006) outlines how self-efficacy beliefs influence children’s

lives and aspirations. Importantly, within his conception, Bandura has been able to
write extensively from the perspective of children’s ability to make choices as they
actively reflect, regulate and organize their own learning. The collective efficacy
within a family, according to Bandura (2006):
is not simply the sum of the members’ beliefs in their individual efficacies. Rather, it is
a shared belief in their family’s capability to work together to manage and improvise their
lives. It is an emergent group belief because it incorporates the interactive dynamics of the
family system operating collectively. The collective whole can be greater or lesser than
the efficacy parts depending on whether the family transactions are mutually supportive
and enabling or wrangling and debilitating. (p. 9)

Within the above conception, children acquire information from their parents that
shape their own beliefs and sense of competence. Indeed, Creech (2001) has shown
that parental efficacy is essential in sustaining children’s musical interest, particularly
in the early stages of learning. Her study provides evidence that parents who possess
a strong sense of self-efficacy for their child’s musical learning, construct a role for
themselves within the learning process such that they are more likely to attend
lessons, keep in contact with the teacher, help to instill discipline and focus in practice
sessions, and support their child emotionally during difficult or taxing periods.
The above findings imply that parents should aim to provide an environment that
offers some degree of challenge within a loving, supportive atmosphere where high
but realistic aspirations are encouraged. Within this environment, children should
also be exposed to positive role models, supported through mastery experiences and
taught to deal with difficulties and obstacles in a constructive manner (Schunk &
Meece, 2006). These effects are reciprocal, because parents often respond positively
when their child displays curiosity and a willingness to engage in new activities, espe-
cially those experiences that parents themselves value and wish to encourage.
Successful parents therefore promote positive competence perceptions and modify
their expectations and demands in line with their child’s needs, abilities and disposi-
tions (Eccles et al., 1998; Schunk & Meece, 2006).
Another important factor is socioeconomic status in that families with less income
or less experience with music may be less able or willing to devote financial resources
to their child’s musical education (e.g., continuing to pay for lessons or to purchase
an instrument) unless they feel that the child is succeeding and has the potential to
make the most of these resources.
In schools, the situation for music is even more pronounced. Very recent evidence
(McPherson, 2006b) using the expectancy-value motivation framework to study child-
ren’s beliefs about a range of school subjects shows that children report that their par-
ents expect them to do less work in music compared to other school subjects,
view music as a less important school subject and do not expect them to work as hard
in music as other academic subjects. It seems self-evident that parents rely heavily on
tangible indicators such as school grades or actual performance when forming percep-
tions about their child’s learning. However, parental perceptions are also shaped by cul-
tural stereotypes in that parents hold expectations for their children’s long-term
success that may differ from the children’s immediate interests (Schunk & Meece,

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102 Psychology of Music 37(1)

2006). By conveying their expectations directly through verbal feedback and indirectly
through support and encouragement, parents convey information that subsequently
affects their children’s expectations and self-efficacy (Schunk & Meece, 2006).

Self-regulation
Children need help from others particularly in situations where they are unable or
unwilling to set goals and anticipate the consequences of their actions (Zimmerman &
Cleary, 2006). Accordingly, parents can play a particularly important role in child-
ren’s musical education by influencing the degree to which children become metacog-
nitively, motivationally and behaviourally active participants in their own learning.
The basis of self-regulated learning theory is that socializing processes, such as vicarious
or direct reinforcement by others or modelled or guided help from more knowledge-
able others, act to reinforce appropriate behaviours that over time allow children to
monitor and control their own learning (McPherson & Zimmerman, 2002).
Children’s earliest experiences are regulated by their parents, who enforce rules of
behaviour for everyday tasks that provide the context for the acquisition of skills,
knowledge and attitudes that will eventually enable them to cope with more formal
aspects of learning after they start school (Corno, 1995; Goodnow & Warton, 1992;
Warton, 1997; Warton & Goodnow, 1991). The socializing role does not end when
formal schooling commences because parents very often continue to enforce behav-
iours that convey messages about their expectations and valuing of certain activities
over others. This type of parental feedback provides the context for children to acquire
an awareness of their own functioning in terms of the self-regulatory resources they
require to guide their own learning (Corno, 1995; Goodnow & Warton, 1992;
Warton, 1997; Warton & Goodnow, 1991)
Studies of child prodigies show that most had parents who systematically super-
vised their practice (Lehmann, 1997; Sosniak, 1985, 1987). They also became accus-
tomed to performing in front of their family and friends before giving their first recital.
Their parents’ and teachers’ interest in their development helped them to gradually
build the confidence, motivation and persistence that would eventually distinguish
them as performers (Sosniak, 1987). In these ways, the encouragement and support
the parents provided were important as the prodigies developed the personal
discipline necessary to persist with the many hours of practice needed to develop their
skills to an elite level. The parents not only applauded and rewarded their child’s
initial attempts to perform in front of others, but they also supported and encouraged
their children’s efforts when interest flagged or skills stalled (Sosniak, 1990).
Less than successful efforts were seen as a challenge to be overcome rather than as a
debilitating failure (Sosniak, 1990).
One might assume that the family background of prodigies is entirely different
from the normal population. However, studies with other populations of students
(Davidson, Sloboda, & Howe, 1995–96; Sloboda & Davidson, 1996) shows that, in
broad terms, high-achieving student musicians tend to have parents who actively
supported their child’s practice, especially during the initial stages of instruction. For
example, parents would either sit in on lessons and/or actively seek regular feedback
from their child’s teacher. These parents also supported their child’s practice by ver-
bal reminders to practise, encouragement, moral support and, in some cases, direct

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 McPherson: The role of parents in children’s musical development 103

supervision. Their involvement was most evident in the early stages of development
when the children’s ability to self-regulate their own learning was least evident. As
the children’s developing self-motivation started to increase and they became increas-
ingly autonomous, the parents, many of whom did not have a musical background
themselves, started to withdraw their direct involvement as they continued to main-
tain a high level of moral support for their children’s increasing involvement with
music. In contrast, low-achieving student musicians tended to receive little parental
support during their early years, but during their teenage years, parental pressure to
motivate practice and attend lessons increased markedly. The researchers viewed this
as a last effort by the parents to keep their child learning (Davidson, Moore, Howe &
Sloboda, 1996; see also, Davidson & Burland, 2006; Davidson et al., 1995–96;
Davidson, Howe, & Sloboda, 1997; Sloboda & Davidson, 1996).
Zdzinski (1994, 1996) also reports on a study in which parental involvement was
significantly related to the students’ performance level and their affective and cogni-
tive musical outcomes. These effects were more evident at the elementary level than
for junior and senior high school students. This complements work by O’Neill (1997)
who studied six- to ten-year-old instrumentalists. She reports a significant relation-
ship between the parents’ involvement in lessons and children’s progress. More able
students tended to have parents who would seek information from the teacher about
progress and how they might assist the child.
According to O’Neill (1997), high-achieving students are not necessarily innately
talented or ‘clever’. Rather, they work harder and with more self-regulation than their
less accomplished peers (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990). As the previous survey has demon-
strated, however, parental involvement helps to facilitate the self-regulatory processes
needed for children to eventually take charge of their own learning.

S O C I O C U LT U R A L C H A R AC T E R I S T I C S
Obviously, parent–child interactions occur within a social-cultural context so the
processes mentioned above need defining in ways that capture these salient dimen-
sions (Pomerantz et al., 2005). In many different areas of learning, including music,
there has been much discussion on the tendency of Asian descendent children to
outperform their American Caucasian peers. To examine this relationship, a number
of studies have focused on the similarities and differences between the practices of
Asian and American parents. More recently, this body of research has been expanded
to examine how the same practices used by parents vary across cultures, based on
conceptions that children of different ethnic or cultural backgrounds view themselves
and their relationships with their parents in distinct ways. For example, Pomerantz et
al. (2005) speculate that Asian children tend to be more likely to take on their par-
ents’ goals and subsequently be more influenced by their parents’ views because they
do not always regard their parents’ opinions in the same way as European American
children. Whereas European American children might view their parents’ practice to
make a decision without consulting them as controlling or interfering, Asian children
may not because this action is congruent with their decision to take on their parents’
goals autonomously. As an example, Iyengar and Lepper (1999) found that European
American elementary children were more interested in their work if they had been
part of the process of choosing it for themselves. In contrast, Asian American children

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104 Psychology of Music 37(1)

often preferred tasks that they were told that their mother chose for them. To follow
up on the results of this study, Bao and Lam (2008) studied a group of Chinese chil-
dren and found that they often experienced fulfilment of their need for relatedness in
situations where they had internalized the demands of significant others to whom
they felt a strong socio-emotional attachment. Even though these children did not
always make choices themselves, they nonetheless experienced autonomy because
they consented fully to, concurred with, or identified with their parent’s wishes.
In music, some evidence exists that individual and situational interest can work in
combination to enhance motivation. For example, Renwick and McPherson (2002)
report on a case study with a 12-year-old female clarinettist who was observed
practising repertoire she had chosen herself with a highly elevated level of attention,
persistence and strategy use in comparison with repertoire assigned by her teacher.
Moreover, decisions on when and for how long to practise (or even what instru-
ment to learn and how to become involved in music learning) are often negotiated
within the home environment. For this reason, social-cultural factors are an essen-
tial component of any understanding of the types of processes that lead to children’s
musical outcomes. These factors deserve more research attention across many areas
of education, and particularly music.

Conclusions
The creation of models to represent relationships and to test research assumptions is
at the core of scientific inquiry (Edwards, 1992). Models are a concise means of rep-
resenting relationships and ideas. They help focus research effort and provide a frame-
work upon which researchers may identify, explore and eventually confirm important
relationships among a wide range of human behaviours. Models therefore play an
important role in the development of theories.
Because the model provided here is selective rather than exhaustive, many addi-
tional parental and child variables probably also exist. Nonetheless, in this article, I
have chosen to describe the relationships that I feel hold the greatest potential for
understanding the complex issues surrounding parent–child interactions and
parental influences on children’s musical learning.
Within the proposed view, there are a number of issues that will need to be
resolved. Importantly, progress will depend on developing techniques that can reliably
distinguish between the different types of parent–child interactions that occur within
homes and that result in different kinds of ‘emotional climates’ across time.
Researchers in our field would do well to keep an eye out for new methodologies that
are emerging to study family dynamics in other areas of psychology.
To improve our understanding of the principles embedded in the proposed frame-
work it will be important to clarify more precisely how mothers in comparison with
fathers support their child’s musical education, and whether there are any fundamen-
tal differences between how mothers versus fathers support a daughter as compared
to a son’s musical education. Evidence in education suggests that during adolescence,
daughters receive more parental involvement than sons, perhaps because they are
more obedient and cooperative (Carter & Wojtkiewicz, 2000). In sociology, however,
much debate centres on the validity of the Trivers and Willard (1973) hypothesis that

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 McPherson: The role of parents in children’s musical development 105

proposes that throughout evolutionary history, low-ranking parents have tended to

invest more in their daughters than their sons while high-ranking parents have
tended to invest more in their sons than their daughters (Freese & Powell, 1999).
Clearly, within the proposed framework, the role of mothers as compared to fathers,
parental socioeconomic status, level of education (including musical education),
number of children in the family and the cultural norms parents follow deserve more
attention from music psychologists and music educators. Given that the model is
based on evidence in educational and developmental psychology, it will be especially
important for researchers to design studies that attempt to gather data on each com-
ponent of the model within both specific (e.g., learning repertoire for a concert) and
general (e.g., informal versus formal) musical contexts.
Research is also needed to more clearly understand the decisions parents make to
support their children and how they come to believe that their involvement will make
a difference. The home environment involves many types of pressures, such as eco-
nomic problems and stressful life events, in which parenting may suffer (Hoover-
Dempsey & Sandler, 1997). In the McPherson longitudinal study (McPherson, 2005;
McPherson & Davidson, 2006), seven of the nine learners whose parents separated at
some point in the study (drawn from a sample of 157 beginners) ceased instruction
very soon or immediately after one of the parents left the home. Of the two learners
who did continue, both relied on extraordinary amounts of encouragement and emo-
tional support from the remaining parent to sustain their involvement.
In conclusion, almost all the literature on parental influences on children’s learning
has focused on academic subjects, with very few studies on music learning. For this
reason, my review has summarized this literature in a way that would be valid for
music learning by drawing on the main trends and concepts that appear to be rele-
vant and interspersing ideas and findings from music-related research. In so doing,
I hope to have alerted readers to the complexity of the subject and to the benefits that
could be derived for children’s learning based on a more thorough understanding of
the critical role that parents play in children’s musical education.
My training and experience as a teacher inculcated within me a feeling that the
most important influence on a child’s development is the teacher. However, in recent
years, I have come to realize how limited this view is as I began to understand more
fully how the emotional climate within families profoundly influences children’s
musical education. Obviously, many contextual aspects affect children’s musical
development, but there is no reason to doubt, given the extensive research now avail-
able, just how important parents are to their children’s musical development.

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110 Psychology of Music 37(1)

G A RY E . M C P H E R S O N ,
PhD, holds the Marilyn Pflederer Zimmerman Endowed Chair in Music
Education in the School of Music at the University of Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is a former
President of the Australian and International Societies for Music Education and has published
over 100 book chapters, journal articles and conference papers. One of his recent publications
is an edited volume for Oxford University Press (2006) entitled: The Child as Musician:
A Handbook of Musical Development.
Address: School of Music, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1114 W. Nevada Street,
Urbana, Illinois USA 61801. [email: gem@uiuc.edu]

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